The War that Saved My Life by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

Susan made Jamie a pair of nice shorts to wear to church out of an old tweed
skirt that had once been Becky’s. She recut the jacket that had gone with the
skirt and turned it into a short heavy coat I could wear when I was riding.
Since the day I broke Susan’s sewing machine I’d refused to touch it, but
Susan started to teach me how to sew by hand. She said it was better to learn
that way first anyhow. She showed me how to sew on buttons, and I sewed
the buttons onto all the bed jackets she made, and my jacket, and the flap on
Jamie’s shorts.
At the WVS meeting, she told the other women that I had helped her. She
said so, when she came home.
One day she rummaged around in her bedroom and came out with an
armful of wool yarn. She got out wooden sticks. She looped the yarn around
the sticks and pretty soon had made warm hats for Jamie and me, and
mufflers, and mittens to keep our hands warm.
My mittens looked like they had two thumbs apiece. Susan showed me
how one thumb-part went over my thumb, and the other went over my littlest
finger. She had taken very thin scraps of leather and sewed them across the
palms. “They’re riding mittens,” she said, watching my face. “See?”
I saw. When I’d first started riding Butter I’d held the reins in my fists, but
Fred insisted I do it the proper way, threading them through my third and
fourth fingers and out over my thumb. In these mittens I could hold the reins
right, and the leather strips would keep the yarn from wearing away.
“I made them up,” Susan said. “They were all my own idea. Do you like
them?”
It was one of those times when I knew the answer she wanted from me, but
didn’t want to give it. “They’re okay,” I said, and then, relenting a little,
“Thank you.”
“Sourpuss,” she said, laughing. “Would it kill you to be grateful?”
Maybe. Who knew?
The vicar came over on a Saturday with a gang of boys and built an Anderson
shelter in the back garden for us. Anderson shelters were little tin huts that
were supposed to be safe from bombs. Ours didn’t look safe. It looked small,
and dark, and flimsy. The bottom half of it was buried in the ground, and you
had to go down three steps to open the little door. Inside, there was just room
for two long benches, facing each other.